((I'm assuming you guys kept CCing the other Heph admins))
Hargraves, the price already factors in the discount from mass-production. It is possible that we could figure out some flaw which could be corrected to cheapen the price, but that's only a possibility.
Also, you mentioned that a nuclear missile wouldn't be dangerous as long as the operator doesn't "stupidly fire in close quarters". Looking at your file, you haven't been on a mission, so I'll explain why we don't design weapons assuming the operators are intelligent; Your teammates' adeptness at getting themselves killed is only rivaled by their adeptness at killing everything else around them. There are exceptions, but everyone has access to the same weapons.
((The prices you got were given as final production prices, Tryrar. That's how things work now. If you were going to build one yourself, the price would be a
lot higher.))
Simus, I don't mean to question your judgement, but I think it would be a good idea to manufacture a few copies of his device for basic testing on Hephaestus. There isn't much data on how effective it really is, so we don't have sufficient information to fairly say that the device shouldn't be prototyped.
Besides, I've long thought that we should try making some cheaper alternative to a gauss cannon. We both know that that horrible example of engineering is a pointless waste of resources, so we should really make an effort to replace it. Hargraves has potentially done a lot of the work for us here, so it would be a shame if we dropped the design now only to come up with something similar later.
((I didn't see any quotes from PW about how damaging the missiles are. I very easily could have missed them, but if I didn't, we really should check.))